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Friday, 6 April 2012

Hardwick Walk

Our first family trip out in the car was to Hardwick "more glass than wall" Hall. We visited here last year, see this post for photos of the inside. Today though, it was for a walk outside the hall. a supposed 3.5 miles. The weather was not as beautiful as it had been the previous week unfortunately, but this is the UK and it was a Bank Holiday weekend so it figures really! The place was heaving! But thankfully as our walk was more off the beaten track we only had to walk through a pocket of the crowds, which was more than enough. Once we left the busy path the smell of wild garlic was delicious, I know yu can pick it and use it in cooking but I wouldn't know where to start, which bit of the plant to actually use etc so we just enjoyed the lush smell. We saw some lovely miniature ponies, which we just had to say Hello too, they were so sweet and just a manageable size for me, I'm not a big horse fan. There was lots of work being done in the woods, with tree's being cut down/back. Cordelia and Ruben were looking out for animal burrows and Cordelia noticed this honeycomb at the bottom of a hollow tree. It was very cool.

I have never seen honeycomb like this before, so we were all quite excited. The children wanted to bring it home but I wasn't sure what we could actually do with it so we put it back where it was. We had some lovely views from the top of the hills but the weather started to go a little bleak so we started to hurry a bit. No way was that walk only 3.5 miles!! More like 5, but it was a lovely way to spend the first day of a four day weekend :)